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Pain of Fiscal Cliff Averted, but Bigger Pain Ahead For Needy Wasn’t

The last minute deal to avert the fiscal cliff brought fiscal relief, but that relief will be short lived. A year ago GOP congressional leaders made clear that if they have their way they will weld the meat ax on vital domestic programs. In March, they will get their chance. This time they have the cover and leverage of the debt ceiling battle, and they will be under even fiercer pressure from conservatives not to make any more concessions to President Obama and the Democrats on delaying spending cuts.
The cuts are brutal. The programs targeted for them include food grant aid, job training programs, and health programs. The biggest hit will be on programs that directly serve needy children and their families. These programs and the funding for them have long been the most tenuous and vulnerable even in the best of fiscal times. Many of them have flown quietly under the public radar scope for years, but no more. They will be back in the budget cut bulls eye in March and they will spark yet another fierce fight, and they should.
The devils in the details of the proposed cuts but those details though have drawn almost no intense media or public scrutiny. The grim dollars and cents tally of programs to be cut or eliminated in the next budget debate go round is heartbreaking.

These scheduled cuts are just the tip of the iceberg. The Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies sounded the loudest alarm on the scheduled cuts. It has listed dozens more programs that will be sharply reduced or are on the chopping block. They affect tens of millions of the poorest and neediest Americans. If ever the penny wise and pound foolish line applied it’s to these cuts. They would reduce the U.S. gross domestic product for the next decade by nearly $80 billion. The billions do not tell the human toll the cuts will take on the neediest and least protected. The pain of the fiscal cliff was averted, but the bigger pain for the needy that looms wasn’t.